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Little Mac
Little Mac is the playable protagonist in the NES and Wii versions of Punch-Out!!. Little Mac is known by fans for his jumping uppercut called the "Star Punch", so called because stars are needed to use it, which has a greater deal of strength than the normal punches. It may knock out his opponents depending on how much energy they have left. Biography He is supposedly 17 years old, 4'8" (5'7" in the Wii version of Punch-Out!!), 107 lb (49 kg), and hailing from the Bronx, New York. He is interested in getting into the World Video Boxing Association, which has a long history of rookie boxers joining the ranks in an effort to become world champions. He traveled to New York in hopes of searching for someone that could train him. He met 200 different trainers and was rejected 200 times. It was not until he met Jerome "Doc" Louis, who was a former heavyweight champion in his own right, then he began his journey to the top of the Boxing circuit. Doc gives Little Mac advice between rounds in each game. Appearances ''Punch-Out!! featuring Mr. Dream'' (1987–1990) Doc Louis put Little Mac through a hard training regime, in which Little Mac was eventually able to overcome. Once it seemed that Little Mac was ready, Doc Louis put his skills to the test. Little Mac fought the likes of Glass Joe, King Hippo, Soda Popinski, and many other boxers before reaching the final fight against Mr. Dream (in two earlier versions of the game, Mac's final encounter is with Super Macho Man and Mike Tyson), which saw Little Mac gaining the victory and the championship. ''Super Punch-Out!!'' (1994) The SNES version of Super Punch-Out!! features a blond-haired boxer named by the player. While the game itself doesn't mention the athlete's name, various promotional material from Nintendo asserts that this character is in fact another incarnation of Little Mac. His signature Star Punch was dropped, replaced with a Knockout Punch. ''Punch-Out!!'' (2009) Little Mac returns to the W.V.B.A. after 15 years in the new Punch-Out!! title for Wii, which is considered a remake of the original NES games. As in the original NES game, Doc Louis is his trainer and gives advice to Mac between rounds. Some of this "advice" is hardly helpful, though. Mac starts out as a rookie advancing through the W.V.B.A. Championship. He must first win the belt for the Minor Circuit before entering the Major Circuit and finally the World Circuit. Between circuits, Doc trains Mac for the next circuit to fight even stronger opponents. Once he has the World Championship belt, he must defend it against each of the circuit fighters. After successfully fighting all 13 contenders a second time, Mac agrees to retire after 3 losses during Mac's Last Stand. In Head-to-Head mode, Mac fights a recolored clone of himself. Here, his moves are slightly different, and each player will alternately flash blue. Hitting the other Mac while he is blue increases the power of your Giga Mac meter until it transforms Little Mac into Giga Mac. As Giga Mac, his powers are different, and he can increase his Giga Mac meter and stars with left and right dodges. Once a player transforms, the screen changes to a single screen with controls more like single player, until Giga Mac either changes back or is KOed. Though he rarely speaks, he is voiced by Matt Harty. Giga Mac Giga Mac is a character who has so far only appeared in Punch-Out!! for the Wii. He is a powered-up version of Little Mac, only available in the head-to-head mode. Unlike the fast and lightweight Little Mac, Giga Mac is a slow, hulking powerhouse, akin to King Hippo. He has moves that range from a wind-up punch to a double-handed overhead strike. Little Mac becomes Giga Mac after one of the players fills up a blue bar by punching the other player at certain times. Giga Mac plays like if the player was an opponent like the ones from the career mode, because when he shows up, the multiplayer split-screen becomes only one screen and in order to defeat Giga Mac the other player has to dodge his attacks and then punch him. Giga Mac can earn stars just by posing and doesn't need to attack. Other appearances * Little Mac was featured as the protagonist in the Punch-Out!! stories in Valiant Comics' Nintendo Comics System, appearing in the stories "The First Fight", "Outsiders", and "Fox and Hounds". He also makes a cameo in the prologue short of the Captain N comic books, suggesting that his stories are canonical to the Captain N continuity, although he never showed up in any of the actual Captain N stories (nor did King Hippo, a Captain N regular, appear in the Punch-Out!! stories). * He can also be found as a Hasbro action figure, as an Applause action figure, and in a Topps trading card series. * In the Japan-only Wii game titled Captain Rainbow, Little Mac appears as a supporting character. * Little Mac appeared in the Wii title, WarioWare: Smooth Moves in one of the micro-games based on the NES Punch-Out!! games. * He also appeared as one of the Assist Trophy characters as well as one of the regular Trophies in the Wii title Super Smash Bros. Brawl. In that game, he does his one-two jabs and punches he learned from Doc Louis, as well as his Star Uppercut. He is voiced by Hisao Egawa. * The Electronic Arts game, Fight Night: Round 2 for the Nintendo GameCube featured the blond boxer from 1994's Super Punch-Out!!, who is asserted through Nintendo promotional material to be Little Mac. Trivia * In the Wii version of Punch-Out!!!, it's true that each and every opponent Little Mac faces is afraid of his Star Punch. * The reason that Little Mac hardly speaks is that Nintendo has a tradition where its games' protagonists talk very little or don't talk at all. * According to an interview with boxer Paul Malignaggi, the man who played Little Mac in the commercial for the new Punch-Out!!, Little Mac is rumored to be Italian-American. However, his ethnicity is not officially known. * Little Mac appears with a darker skin color than in the previous games. Some players believe that the reason for this may have something to do with his appearance in Captain Rainbow. * Little Mac got his name from the fact that when Punch-Out!! for the NES was being developed, Nintendo had to shrink the playable boxer instead of making him transparent due to the NES hardware's inability to recreate the arcade entirely. * When playing Head-to-Head in Punch-Out!! for the Wii, you earn what is referred to from the game as "Giga Mac Juice". This is speculated as a reference to steroids. Category:Characters Category:Punch-Out!! console characters Category:Punch-Out!! featuring Mr. Dream characters Category:Super Punch-Out!! console characters